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Hard surface wire?

I am slowly switching our shop from stick to mig process. Currently we use Wearshield ABR. I am looking for a wire that's available in .045" gas or gasless.....we just want quality. Decent out of position is neccesary. For the most part we will be doing equipment in an asphalt plant ranging rom conveyors for stone to bucket loader buckets thatscoop off a pavement surface to load the asphaly mixing bins with stone and sand. Looking for something that lasts long, has good buildup and wear resistance as well ease of use out of position. I am perfectly capable of setting most wires up but the issue is who we have using the stuff. Anyways, thanks in advance. Dave

Thanks. I am already set up with Outershield 71 Elite for the structural end. I am looking for the hard surface wire. I've used hard alloy before but not sure which is best.

Originally Posted by JerseyWelder

I am slowly switching our shop from stick to mig process. Currently we use Wearshield ABR. I am looking for a wire that's available in .045" gas or gasless.....we just want quality. Decent out of position is neccesary. For the most part we will be doing equipment in an asphalt plant ranging rom conveyors for stone to bucket loader buckets thatscoop off a pavement surface to load the asphaly mixing bins with stone and sand. Looking for something that lasts long, has good buildup and wear resistance as well ease of use out of position. I am perfectly capable of setting most wires up but the issue is who we have using the stuff. Anyways, thanks in advance. Dave

Best thing to do in your case is to call the various hard-face manufacturers direct. Stoody, Rankin, Lincoln Electric, and Postle all have excellent technical advisors, and can tell you which products they supply will work best in your specific application, considering both hardness and toughness (resistance to chipping). Probably other manufacturers do also, I can't think of them right now.

Also consider weld-on wear plates, I think from Kennametal, others may supply them also. The ones I used were 2"x3"x 3/16" or so, with a hole in the middle. Good for covering large areas, simply hold them in place, plug weld the hole, and then weld around the edges. I used them often when hardfacing grinding equipment. This was 20 years ago, I'm sure somebody somewhere still supplies something similar.

Obviously, I'm just a hack-artist, you shouldn't be listening to anything I say .....

In the western U.S. it's very (very) hard to find hardface consumables in anything other than stick (in quantities) because everyone went years ago to weld on hard material.
Small amounts are still done with stick, but mines, etc are all using weld on material be they Kenco plates, or more likely carbide overlay kits or the manganese wear plates.
Kenco plates are cheap and fast to install (and in stock about everywhere), carbide/manganese are more expensive but last a lot longer.
Lincoln makes some good hard wires but they aren't always available, some are made to order in pallet quantity only with considerable lead time.
Just my opinion but the off the shelf carbide overlay material is the biggest bang for the buck, they armour up a D-9 in very little time and last really nice.
Again my opinion but anybody running a hard wire (unless it's on a roll crusher) instead of weld on material (in large quantity), is wasting many dollars even on a little backhoe bucket.
The Kenco distributer in my state will ship 5, or 5,000 right to my door.